03 November 2021
Newsdesk
Mark Hoppus chats with Brandon Boyd of Incubus about the 20th anniversary of the group’s fourth album 'Morning View’ on the latest episode of After School Radio on Apple Music Hits. Boyd shares what was special about recording the album in a mansion in Malibu following the breakout success of 1999’s ‘Make Yourself’, how Malibu influenced the album, and the album’s legacy 20 years later. He also discusses the influence of his favourite vocalists, including Chris Cornell, Mike Patton, and Jeff Buckley.
Brandon Boyd Tells Mark Hoppus What Was Special About Recording Incubus’ ‘Morning View’…
There were so many things that were different about this record. Even the circumstances coming into it were pretty radically different for us. We were coming off of the heels of our first, I suppose you could call it our first breakout record, which was called 'Make Yourself'. It came out in 1999. And as you know, when things are going well in the late nineties or early two thousands for your rock band, you're on tour kind of indefinitely...We came off of 'Make Yourself' with a lot of momentum coming into Morning View. And so we had a little bit more, I suppose, power and agency to decide what kind of record we wanted to make. And the thing that occurred to all of us was that we didn't want to go straight back into a windowless room to make music. We were super inspired to make music, but we wanted to change our environment. We searched for a few weeks for a house that we could all live in and set up our gear in the living room and record in the house and write and record kind of simultaneously. And we found this big empty mansion in Malibu on Morning View Drive, and we got it and we set up our gear in the living room and it was this big, beautiful living room that was currently designed to have orchestral performances. It was like an orchestral hall with these beautiful picture windows that looked out over the ocean and it was perfect. We came into that experience with all that momentum coming off of 'Make Yourself' and for whatever reason, the pressure to recreate the success of 'Make Yourself' didn't really penetrate the experience so much. We just had this amazing time. We had this incredible experience living together in this house and making music and eating together every day and being around each other and the songs just sort of, they just spilled out of us and it really kind of captured the energy of the place. It captured the energy of the moment for us. And so for all of those reasons, it was a very unique experience.
Brandon Boyd Tells Apple Music How Recording in Malibu Influenced The Album…
I really think it had an effect. You know, when you're in recording studios, it's fun and it's exciting because you're around all this gear and you go into these ... It's almost like a cocoon state. But the part that always bothered me about it was that in order to get fresh air or to look at anything inspiring or be inspired by the environment, you have to leave the recording studio.With 'Morning View' it was like everywhere we looked was beautiful. We could open the doors and the ocean breeze would come in the room and help inspire the song. If we wanted to take a break, we would walk down to the beach. It was just a completely different experience than we'd ever had before.
Brandon Boyd Tells Mark Hoppus About The Legacy of ‘Morning View’ 20 Years Later…
It's actually quite difficult for me to be really concrete about what an album of ours means amongst our catalogue. I know that it was a pivotal moment for us as a band. It was a pivotal moment for me as a songwriter. There was a moment in time where I was being ... It was almost like my musical tastes were shifting and they were shifting pretty dramatically. I grew up loving lots and lots of different kinds of music. It was kind of all over the place. I loved the Grateful Dead and Phish as much as I loved, like Mr. Bungle and Slayer and John Zorn music. It was all over the place, like I said. But as we were coming into this period of time, kind of in my early to mid-twenties, my tastes and I suppose the aesthetic of the stuff that I was producing and we were producing as a band started to kind of ... It was becoming more refined. There were hints of it on 'Make Yourself', and then it started to really concretise around 'Morning View'. I guess it's a moment in our career when we truly came into our own. Like I said, on 'Make Yourself', there were moments where we were coming into our own, but there were still inflections of earlier influences. You could still hear where the music was kind of coming from. I feel like with 'Morning View', it was the first time for real that we made an entire body of work that was sort of uniquely us. And it's a thing. We learn how to play music through other artists and listening to music. And that's how human beings learn. We learn through mimicry. But then if you have enough time and space and time to hone in on your craft, there's this really cool opportunity to create something unique and hopefully even original. To me, that's what 'Morning View' kind of meant. And then from there and on our work thereafter, it got more and more and more for better or worse.
Brandon Boyd Tells Apple Music About Being Inspired By The Late Chris Cornell…
Chris Cornell, I know I grew up listening to SoundGarden and I grew up watching them live at early Lollapalooza and things like that. And he was such an incredible example of both songwriting prowess but also almost like a godly rock singer. He had this Greek God thing. He was tall. He was handsome. He was like chiseled, but then he would sing and it was almost like he would sing with his hands out in front of him like he was conjuring thunder or something. A nineties version of like, like Ronnie James Dio or something. It was just so huge and so powerful. I always admired it and was inspired by it. And so the SoundGarden record super unknown was very, very, very influential to me as a late teenager. Chris was a really, really great guy. He was always really, really nice to me. When we toured, we toured with SoundGarden. We also toured with Audio Slave and it was amazing to meet somebody and be around somebody who was such a big influence and have him really embrace you and be kind to you and want to talk to you and spend time with you. He's greatly missed.
Brandon Boyd Tells Apple Music About Being Inspired by Mike Patton…
This guy is one of the most prolific singers in the game, still today. He was also a big influence on me as a kid. And still today, I listen to what he does and I have a great admiration for him. He can sing like a Greek God, but he can also scream like some underground Japanese punk situation and have the best of those both worlds in one vessel is pretty remarkable. We toured with Mr. Bungle and Mike and the guys of Mr. Bungle were also super, super rad to me and the guys Incubus. And I'm really glad to know him. But anyway, Mr. Bungle, I got into as an early teenager and I loved how irreverent and disgusting and scary the music was. And so this track isn't necessarily any of those things, but it's just very, very odd and wonderful and makes me feel like I'm in a different place. I love it.
Brandon Boyd Tells Mark Hoppus About Jeff Buckley...
Jeff Buckley to me was my first experience of a Western male singer, who is embodying some of that vocal freedom. And he was doing it with his own thing, completely. And it turns out that he was hugely inspired by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as well, but he was doing with this sort of New York, East Village sentiment that somehow made it really cool and different and refined. Anyway, his song Grace from his first and only full length LP while he was alive is a really good snapshot of Jeff's songwriting and singing ability. I know Jeff Buckley is adored cross-generationally, but if anyone listening, hasn't listened to Jeff Buckley's record, the album is called Grace. I highly recommend it. It's really special
